The subject matter discussed in this section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in this section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in this section or associated with the subject matter provided as background should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in this section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also correspond to implementations of the claimed technology.
The modern or more conventional way of placing separators, commonly referred to as sticks, between layers of lumber in a lumber stacker in sawmills, is to use an overhead pusher lug type of sorter. The sorter transfers the sticks to slanted or vertical overhead magazines. The magazines overlie the layers of lumber being stacked. The magazines are filled while the stacker is running. Once the magazines have sticks loaded therein, there is another mechanism, comprised of multiple air cylinders and photo eyes, which take the stick from the magazine down to the top of the layer of lumber. For the sticks to fit into the magazines the sticks must be in very good condition. They cannot be bowed, twisted, over-thickness, or broken. They cannot be cracked or a different width from one end to the other. Most of these systems have some kind of a stick scanner which tries to reject out of spec sticks. This means the mills can end up throwing away potentially good sticks. When mills are using tens of thousands of sticks per shift, this can potentially cost the mills a large amount of money annually in purchasing sticks that will run through the system. When an out of spec stick does make it through the system, the resulting jams can cause a large amount of downtime. One example of a conventional lumber stacker with overhead magazines is sold by Pendu Manufacturing, Inc. of New Holland, Pa. as the Pendu 3500 Lumber Stacker.